Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, December 16, 2011

Daniel Mudd, the former chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, and Richard Syron, ex-CEO of Freddie Mac, were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for understating by hundreds of billions of dollars the subprime loans held by the firms.

The lawsuits filed today in Manhattan federal court were followed by an SEC statement that it had entered into “non- prosecution agreements” with each company. Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise which issues almost half of all mortgage-backed securities, and Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage-finance company, had “agreed to accept responsibility” for their conduct, the SEC said.

The agency said in the lawsuits that Syron, Mudd and other executives understated exposure to subprime mortgage loans. From 2007 to 2008, Freddie Mac executives said the company’s exposure was from $2 billion to $6 billion when it was actually as high as $244 billion, according to one SEC complaint.

From 2006 to 2008, Washington-based Fannie Mae executives said the firm’s exposure to subprime mortgage and reduced- documentation loans was about $4.8 billion when it was almost 10 times greater, according to the regulator.

Stephen Harper first became Prime Minister in 2006 and has already dramatically transformed the old Canada. But with no election due for four more years, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

It’s in the nature of true believers and ideologues to believe that any means to their sacred ends are justified. This makes them extremely dangerous people. It’s also typical of such people that they’re often motivated by unfathomable resentment and anger, a compulsion not just to better but to destroy their adversaries. These are good descriptions of Stephen Harper and those closest to him.

There was never a Trudeauland or Mulroneyland or Chrétienland, but as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has made us understand, there is already a Harperland whose nature is quite apparent. Like the American conservatives whom the Harperites so envy, our government has concocted a new reality of its own that it is systematically imposing on the Canadian people. The values and moral code of Mr. Harper’s new Canada are clear.

A central tenet of the new reality is the repudiation of the need for anything as irrelevant as evidence, facts or rationality whenever they are inconvenient. As in cancelling the long-form census, without a shred of reason. As when Injustice Minister Nicholson defends his back-to-the-jungle crime bills by reminding us of a Harperland article of faith: “We don’t govern on the basis of statistics.” Or, as we now know, on the basis of the findings of serious experts both in and out of the government.

Jason Kenney can stand as a past master at inventing evidence to serve his unfailingly partisan needs. This is a man, after all, who has shamelessly claimed a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism in Canada contrary to all the facts. Just days ago, Mr. Kenney employed gratuitously inflammatory language when he created a crisis over a handful of women who wear a veil, and who are of course Muslim.

"We want to set the religious community on fire about this very question: are you interested in social justice? Because this is a prime opportunity," said Ronnie Nunez, 24, a member of the OWS outreach working group. He handed out fliers with slogans such as "We ask you on December 17th to assemble once more" and "Noon Begins Occupation 2.0."

The Trinity Church owns real estate worth over $10 billion, according to Rev. Michael Ellick of Judson Church. Protesters and other churches around the city are urging Trinity Church to grant OWS access to the space, a sliver of land that remains fenced off from Duarte Square, an adjacent public park. In recent days, a police officer has been stationed at the square and small groups of protesters have been canvassing the neighborhood to garner community support.

The financial industry may have taken a hit during the Great Recession. But relative to the overall economy, it's bigger now than it was before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

The financial sector represents a bigger share of the economy today than it did in 2006, recent Commerce Department figures show -- despite the bailouts, bank failures and political efforts at reform that have taken place since.

The findings -- which, indicate that the financial sector accounts for 8.4 percent of the country's GDP, a greater share than five years ago and one of the highest percentages of the past half century, according to The Wall Street Journal -- may come as unwelcome news for anyone who believes that an outsized financial industry doing too much with too many people's money led the country to financial crisis.

Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.

But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.

And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.

Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.

She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."

The major contention of Occupy Wall Street -- that America is a country where a tiny slice of the population controls a disproportionate amount of the wealth and power -- appears to be a view shared by a healthy majority of people.

Seventy-seven percent of Americans say that too much power rests in the hands of large corporations and a few wealthy people, according to a poll released Thursday from the Pew Research Center.

The Pew poll doesn't use the language of Occupy Wall Street, which frames the class struggle in America and elsewhere as a face-off between "the 1 percent" and "the 99 percent." But the poll indicates that the Occupy movement's general sentiment is basically mainstream. Sixty-one percent of respondents in the Pew poll said that the U.S. economic system unfairly favors the rich. Fifty-one percent said that Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps it.

MOSCOW - Russia supports Canada's decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, says its foreign ministry, reaffirming Friday that Moscow will not take on new commitments.

Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told Friday's briefing that the treaty does not cover all major polluters, and thus cannot help solve the climate crisis.

Canada on Monday pulled out of the agreement — initially adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, to cut carbon emissions contributing to global warming. Its move dealt a blow to the treaty, which has not been formally renounced by any other country.

"This is yet another example that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has lost its effectiveness in the context of the social and economic situation of the 21st century," Lukashevich said, adding that the document does not ensure the participation of all key emitters.

The protocol requires some industrialized countries to slash emissions, but doesn't cover the world's largest polluters, China and the United States.

Canada, Japan and Russia said last year they will not accept new Kyoto commitments.

Did you know? Jason Kenney has quit his cabinet post to run the Gay Pride parade. Vic Toews confessed to being a pederast. Stephen Harper has been corresponding with Syrian President Bashar Assad about crowd control for years.

These are not, as you might have thought, lies, but examples of my freedom of expression that I have shared with you to see how, in some hypothetical future, you might vote.

Peter Van Loan is with me on this one. Rob Ford, too, the Toronto mayor having his own connection to the Conservatives’ lying as a part of its campaign to unseat the Liberal MP for Outremont, Irwin Cotler.

The seasoned fabricator behind the polling scam that led to a reprimand earlier this week by the Speaker of the House, Andrew Scheer, is Nick Kouvalis, the CEO of Campaign Research, the website of whose Ottawa-based company tells potential clients that “Ideas matter, but only if people know about them.”

Even more so, it would seem, when people don’t.

Kouvalis is the same zealous bully who ran Ford’s campaign mayoral campaign back in 2010, so pleased with his deceits that he bragged about having created an online identity on Twitter for a totally fake phone-in guest to John Tory’s Newstalk 1010 Radio show called “Karen Philby,” a tactic he credited with having deterred the prospective mayoral candidate from running. Whoever played the part lied about what she would say to get on air and then threatened that were Tory to run, it would show he was “a person of no integrity.”

It's official. Canada's government is no longer just ignoring our legally binding obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. It's withdrawing from the international treaty completely.

I listened to Peter Kent, the Minister of Spin, on CBC's The Current on Wednesday, trying to bluff his way through an interview. Now I can't hit the keys fast enough.

Kent has three disinformation talking points and big fat whopper: 1) Kyoto is the past; 2) Kyoto doesn't include all emitters (China, China and China); and 3) Kyoto would cost Canada $14 billion ($1,600 for every Canadian taxpayer). Taking on neo-cons is a challenge because they take a grain of truth and spinning to suit their agenda.

For starters, is Kyoto part of the past as Kent suggests? It was negotiated 15 years ago, but take a drive through Gaspé or southwest Ontario and you'll see wind turbines going up -- lots of them! Last year, global investment in the renewable energy industry surpassed that of the fossil fuel and nuclear power industry for the first time. There are 300,000 people employed in the German green energy industry alone (high-paying jobs, too). There are solar panel factories taking up residence in abandoned car parts plants in Windsor, Ontario. Australia and British Columbia have both adopted carbon taxes. None of this would be happening now without Kyoto. Despite Kent's clever sound bite, Kyoto IS now -- not the past.

"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

- American journalist, Finley Peter Dunne, 110 years ago

Let's rewrite his words to say that "the role of the deputant is to comfort the children afflicted and afflict the comfortable adults."

I was Deputant #155 on the morning of Dec. 8 at Toronto's City Hall. Sporting goggles on my head, I pleaded for funding not to be slashed from MacGregor Park's wading pool in my Ward 18 neighbourhood. From behind the mic, I witnessed the tactics of the budget committee, led in its charge by budget chief, Mike Del Grande, who was flanked by Councillor Doug Ford, with Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti in the rear, as they ruthlessly interrogated the deputants on how they would generate revenue for the City.

Deride, discredit, dismiss. 1,2,3... knockout. The right-wing members of the budget committee were coached by their media handlers how to demoralize those brave enough to wait, endlessly and breathlessly, for their turn to speak up, with time cut back from five minutes to three under the Ford regime. My de facto mayor, Councillor Adam Vaughan, ex-Budget Chief Shelley Carroll and left-wing councillors Janet Davis and Mike Layton, responded to the right-wing blows by asking leading questions of the deputants to give them more air time, and help support their pleas to maintain core services such as nursing homes, hot breakfasts, swimming pools, and arts grants against the 10 per cent slash across the board. The need for these core service cuts are because Mayor Ford cut $320 million in taxes in his first term in office.

A disaster from the perspective of aggressively tackling emissions, some positive developments can be gleaned from the climate summit.

There are two narratives emerging from the recently completed Durban climate conference. The first is from UN climate-change officials and insiders to the negotiation process who have heralded the result as a promising way forward to a future binding international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

The second narrative is from long-time observers of international environmental negotiations and NGOs who see obfuscation (if not outright lies by major emitters), an agreement to do essentially nothing in the short term, and the putting off of serious commitments until later, when it will make little difference for the climate.

Both narratives are right – and that’s terrible news for the climate, and for the millions of people who will suffer the consequences of climate change. This is not to suggest there is no value in maintaining the multilateral process, which, at the very least, preserves the momentum behind innovations and initiatives that have emerged outside the UN negotiations. But if success continues to be equated with keeping the process going rather than with making tough decisions, the multilateral negotiations will never succeed in producing an effective global response to climate change.

Apparently the desperate search of Republicans for someone they can nominate not named Willard M. Romney continues. New polls suggest that in Iowa, at least, we have already passed peak Gingrich. Next up: Representative Ron Paul.

In a way, that makes sense. Mr. Romney isn’t trusted because he’s seen as someone who cynically takes whatever positions he thinks will advance his career — a charge that sticks because it’s true. Mr. Paul, by contrast, has been highly consistent. I bet you won’t find video clips from a few years back in which he says the opposite of what he’s saying now.

Unfortunately, Mr. Paul has maintained his consistency by ignoring reality, clinging to his ideology even as the facts have demonstrated that ideology’s wrongness. And, even more unfortunately, Paulist ideology now dominates a Republican Party that used to know better.

I’m not talking here about Mr. Paul’s antiwar views or his less well-known views on civil and reproductive rights, which would horrify liberals who think of him as a good guy. I’m talking, instead, about his views on economics.

While the Conservative government has used its newfound majority to push through time allocation motions, which limit the number of hours set aside for debate, more than any previous government, only three bills are expected to pass both the House of Commons and the Senate before the end of the fall sitting of the 41st Parliament.

The following bills made it through the House between Sept. 19 and Dec. 15. Most were introduced in a previous Parliament but didn't make it through the entire legislative process.

C-10 — The omnibus crime bill, combining all the justice measures the Conservatives tried to pass when they had a minority government, is at second reading debate in the Senate and expected to pass in 2012.

C-13 — A bill to implement the spring budget had third reading in the Senate on Dec. 13 and is awaiting royal assent to become law. Among other things, the budget increased support payments to the poorest seniors, extended children's tax credits to arts programs, phased out the per-vote subsidy to political parties and made the $2-billion Gas Tax fund for cities permanent.

C-16 — The security of tenure of military judges act, making changes to how long military judges can serve, received royal assent on Nov. 29.

C-20 — The fair representation act, which will add 30 seats to the provinces with the biggest populations, went to third reading stage in the Senate on Dec. 15 and is expected to become law before the Senate rises.

Those who thought the Harper government would ease up a bit after winning a majority were wrong. Noblesse oblige is out, or, rather, was never in. If anything, the Harper government is more bullying, scornful of dissent, intent on controlling every utterance, contemptuous of the media and determined to carry on political war at all times and by all means.

The Conservative war machine engaged in what House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer called this week “reprehensible” conduct in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal. There, the Conservatives hired a firm to phone voters and tell them that Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was thinking of resigning.

This rumour was completely false, but it spread doubts. It was undoubtedly designed for the ears of Jewish voters, who are plentiful in that riding and who’ve been moving en masse to the Conservatives, who’ve lined up what passes for a Canadian Middle East policy with every desire of the Israeli government.

The notion that Mr. Cotler has been anything but a devoted supporter of Israel throughout his life is insulting. But so far has the Jewish community swung behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view of the Middle East that Mr. Cotler stands accused by Conservatives, unbelievably, of not being supportive enough of a state he loves.

OTTAWA—Ottawa and Attawapiskat agree on everything except who controls the band’s purse strings — but that’s a major schism that could impede progress on the troubled northern reserve.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan and his parliamentary secretary, Greg Rickford, met Thursday with leadership from the western James Bay community to hash out a way forward.

In a meeting that Rickford described as “respectful, cordial and collegial,” they emerged with a three-step stability plan.

Rickford said they agreed that emergency supplies need to keep coming in for the near term to resolve the Cree community’s immediate housing crisis. A retrofit of a local healing centre needs to be finished for the medium term. And 22 new houses need to be set up on new lots for the long term.

And Duncan confirmed construction will begin on a new elementary school in Attawapiskat in the spring, after years of lobbying by residents.

As The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting, the 14-year-old boy's parents, who have asked that their names not be released to media, were notified by a teacher because officials at Willowcreek Middle School in Lehi say they were making an effort to be "proactive" in preventing bullying. "We do include parents any time there's a potential safety issue with a student," said Rhonda Bromley, a spokesperson for Utah's Alpine School District.

After the student revealed he was gay in a class assignment, an administrator talked to the boy and encouraged him to discuss the issue with his parents, to which he reluctantly agreed. “The student chose himself to make his sexuality known in a variety of ways,” Bromley told MSNBC. “And there had already started to be some negative feedback. If there is the potential for a bullying or a harassment situation, it’s the responsibility of the school to step in and to make sure the student is safe." Reportedly at the boy’s request, he was not present when his parents were told, MSNBC noted.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that authorizes indefinite detentions of American terrorism suspects, coincidentally acting on the controversial measure on the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed 86 to 13 and is expected to be signed quickly by President Obama, who withdrew a veto threat against the bill Wednesday. Six Democrats, six Republicans and one independent opposed the bill.

Though the legislation passed overwhelmingly, several senators argued that it was threatening fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, which is celebrated every Dec. 15.

"We as Americans have a right to a speedy trial, not indefinite detention," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). "We as Americans have a right to a jury of our peers, which I would argue is ... not enlisted or military personnel sitting in a jury. You cannot search our businesses or place of business or our homes without probable cause under the Bill of Rights."

"You cannot be deprived of your freedom or your property without due process of law, and that, I would say, is not indefinite detention," added Kirk, who voted for the bill. "I would actually argue that no statute and no Senate and no House can take these rights away from you."

Oh, the outrage. Who knew that you need to swear to get the media coverage on climate change, even if indirectly? You'd think that the threat to human civilization itself would be enough.

And while Justin Trudeau quickly apologized to Environment Minister Peter Kent for calling him a "piece of sh*t," saying it was "decidedly unparliamentary," Twitter lit up largely in support of the outburst, tapping into a wave of anger across the country with many Canadians feeling deeply betrayed by their government for reneging on Canada's international climate commitments.

But we are now supposed to go back to being polite and ignoring our anger, to respecting rules of decorum, and to generally going along with the agenda of our duly elected government, even if that agenda involves undermining the conditions of life on Earth for our kids so that the oil industry can ramp up the strip mining of northern Alberta?

I have a five-year-old boy and, like all parents, I would throw myself in front of a bullet heading his way; yet somehow I'm supposed to suspend that instinct when it comes to climate change. I'm supposed to bide my time until the next election, hoping somehow that Canadian voters will not be duped by the multi-million dollar campaign of tar sands companies, and by the relentless spin of a government that has chosen to represent them rather than its citizens.

The Conservative majority in the Senate gave final approval Dec. 15 to legislation stripping the Canadian Wheat Board of its marketing monopoly, but the political dogfight surrounding the law may be far from over.

The provisions of the bill don’t come into effect until the bill receives Royal assent. When that might happen was unclear.

Meanwhile, lawyers representing eight farmer-elected wheat board directors, who face dismissal as soon as Royal assent happens, will be in the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Dec. 16, trying to get a judicial hold slapped on the implementation of the bill.

The directors want the court to order the government not to implement any provisions of the bill until the Federal Court of Appeal rules on a federal challenge to a lower court ruling Dec. 6.

It said Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz violated a provision of the existing Canadian Wheat Board Act by not holding a plebiscite among Western farmers on the plan to ending the monopoly by Aug. 1, 2012.

Ritz says the law has to come into force immediately so farmers can begin negotiating in January on sales contracts for their 2012 crop.

There is no shortage of columnists who label Stephen Harper a bully, a control freak, even dictator. So how does this explain Harper caring so deeply about an issue on which he is going outside his comfort zone. I am talking about Attawapiskat.

Every Canadian prime minister has attempted to meet the needs of Aboriginals, but none have succeeded on the fundamentals. Diefenbaker gave Natives the right to vote, appointed the first Native to the Senate, and proudly wore the ceremonial Indian headdress. But for most governments it has been two steps back for every step forward.

Rather than simply respond to the headlines with a short-term housing fix in Attawapiskat, Harper has boldly recognized the human disaster for what it is. He doesn’t want to repair homes on a single Reserve; he wants real solutions to the problems that date back to 1534 when Jacques Cartier met Aboriginal people on the north side of Chaleur Bay in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

While most politicians are careful not to raise hope and expectations, Harper has raised the bar by agreeing to attend what he called a historic Crown-First Nations Gathering on January 24. Assembly of First Nations President Shawn Atleo, a delegation of First Nation Chiefs and Harper will gathering in full public view as they discuss how to improve the quality of life and long-term economic prosperity of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.

Placing himself on the firing line does not fit into the playbook that most members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery believe Harper has been following. He does not convene first minister’s meetings with provincial premiers. He does not attend open town hall meetings. He resists walkabouts where he might encounter a citizen’s angry outburst (Remember Solange Denis saying “goodbye Charlie Brown” to Brian Mulroney over his budget proposal to partially de-index old age pensions).

PARLIAMENT HILL—House Speaker Andrew Scheer’s dismissal of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s complaint that he was the victim of a dirty-tricks telephone campaign in his riding meant one of the top figures in the Conservative Party of Canada avoided being called to Parliament to defend his consulting firm’s role in the affair.

Richard Ciano, a founding partner of Campaign Research Inc., the company that conducted telephone polling calls in Mr. Cotler’s Montreal riding of Mount Royal suggesting Mr. Cotler was retiring and a byelection was imminent, was national vice-president of the Conservative Party of Canada from its founding convention in 2005 until 2008.

Mr. Ciano, who did not return a telephone call from The Hill Times on Thursday, is currently running for election as president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. His campaign blog states he was also a member of the national Conservative Party’s governing council, serving Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) as the party was in transition from Official Opposition to government following the 2006 federal election.

Mr. Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) has come under criticism from the NDP following his ruling dismissing Mr. Cotler’s claim the telephone campaign violated his privilege as an MP. NDP House Leader Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) and NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) said Mr. Scheer should have recused himself from the ruling and allowed the Commons Deputy Speaker, NDP MP Denise Savoie (Victoria, B.C.), to take his place for the arguments and adjudication of Mr. Cotler’s case.

PHOENIX -- The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, is a result of the U.S. Justice Department's three-year investigation of Arpaio's office amid complaints of racial profiling and a culture of bias at the agency's top level.

The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field.

Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

Occupy Wall Street has thrust the issue of extreme inequality into the spotlight. The movement has spread so quickly and alarmed politicians not because of its rather small encampments but because its message resonates. Most people know, or at least half-know, that our problem is growing inequality, and they also know that government is complicit in the financially driven capitalism that is in the driver’s seat. The slogan “We are the 99 percent” stresses our commonality and lays the basis for a movement ethic of democracy, inclusion and solidarity. This is a big and welcome step. After all, we need an ethic that goes beyond the incessant liberal (and union) talk of “the middle class.”

Still, the movement has to respond to the police sweeps of its encampments by becoming broader and more hard-hitting. It has to firmly include the vast number of people who have been marginalized by the rhetoric of American politics and by the realities of the American economy. In many places the homeless have joined the encampments. That is a beginning. But it’s not enough. To fully realize an ethic of inclusion, the poorest and most benighted Americans should become part of our protest movement. We need to increase their numbers at our demonstrations, and we need to undertake the protest actions that deal with their most urgent needs—including the attacks on the social safety net that hit them hardest.

There is no chance that Canada will cancel its order for about 65 F-35 joint strike fighters.

That fact was underlined again this week with reports from Japan that before Christmas, Tokyo will announce its intention to buy as many as 50 of the state-of-the-art stealth warplanes.

Japan made its choice after having the kind of long, hard look at rival aircraft — the Typhoon Eurofighter and Boeing's F-18 — that critics in Canada have insisted that the Harper government should have undertaken before it decided to order a fleet of F-35s from Lockheed Martin without a formal bidding process.

With Japan now having finally decided to opt for the F-35, 10 of Canada's allies including Australia, Israel and tiny Singapore — have reached the same conclusion as the Harper government: that the joint strike fighter is the best choice to deal with emerging security threats in the 21st century.

Largely as a result of Japan's decision to buy the F-35, South Korea is also expected to purchase as many as 60 F-35s. Turkey may confirm the purchase of 100 joint strike fighters before the end of the year, too. India is another country urgently considering whether to buy the jet, also known as the Lightning II.

Just past Fifth Avenue, where the gourmet food shops shift into dollar stores and Fourteenth Street turns suddenly seedy, there is a squat, metal-sided building that looks like a relic from a half-familiar past. Coated in grime so thick it’s hard to tell whether the striped siding is green or blue, it still bears boxy traces of postwar optimism (it was built in 1946), but mostly it looks haggard, a smile snaggled with broken teeth.

This is the home of the Waverly Food Stamp Center, one of eighteen such centers in New York City. On a recent Monday morning, it was choked with visitors—men, women and kids in strollers—heading to appointments, picking up applications and pressing to get cases reopened. They came in waves, big and constant, which got sucked upward in two tin-can elevators and then spit out into a room that one applicant, Erica, described as “really hot,” “crowded” and “loud.” It was the kind of place where no one seemed to be in control, and where anyone who might be in control didn’t seem to care. And yet somehow, Erica said, the place functioned. Despite hoops and hurdles, visitors frequently walked out with the help they so desperately needed when they came in.

“They do assist you, they do,” said a middle-aged man who asked to be identified by his nickname, Mr. Monk, as he breezed out of the Waverly Center. Mr. Monk had lost his job, then his home, to the recession and had decided to apply for benefits because “I have to eat.” Still waiting to see if his welfare application would be accepted, he’d already received an emergency food stamp disbursement. “Every red penny goes to food.”

Welcome to the food stamp system: decaying, inundated and one of the most unexpectedly effective safety net programs still standing. Indeed, like the crumbling Waverly Center, the food stamp program, more formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, still stands, still works—remarkably well, all things considered. It may not look pretty, but while other social safety net programs, like public assistance (more commonly called welfare), public housing, Section 8 and even unemployment insurance, have been so thoroughly hobbled that they can no longer respond to the struggles of millions of Americans, the food stamp program has remained surprisingly sensitive to people’s needs. It is one of the defining reasons more Americans were not as immiserated by this recession as they were in eras past.

This fall, as eye-popping statistics depicting the obscene wealth of the top 1 percent were liberated from obscurity by Occupy Wall Street, some equally revealing figures emerged showing how those on the lowest rungs of our economy are faring. The vicious bite of the Great Recession has left one in three Americans—100 million people—either poor or perilously close to it, one busted car or broken leg away from falling into the vortex of dire need whose gravitational pull is a constant feature of their lives. These figures—drawn from the government’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM—provided proof of something these Americans already knew: that the social safety net—the anti-poverty programs that form the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society—remains, even in its stretched and frayed condition, their last, best defense against what FDR called “the hazards and vicissitudes of life.”

The official definition of poverty—developed as a temporary measure by a research analyst at the Social Security Administration named Mollie Orshansky, and formally adopted in 1969—has little relevance to how deprivation is experienced today. With the SPM, it’s possible to glimpse the many forces dragging people down—such as the price of childcare or the high cost of housing in some areas—as well as the mitigating effects of government relief [see chart below]. The portrait it provides of the Great Recession is illuminating. As the damage from the financial meltdown began to spread throughout the economy, triggering waves of layoffs and foreclosures, the parts of the safety net still designed to respond to need, such as food stamps and unemployment insurance, did what they are meant to do. Between 2007 and 2010, these programs kept 10.8 percent of the population out of poverty, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).